Like the Fraziers, many of the 103 travelers on the "Road trip to the White House" came with their families.

Others came with best friends.

However, for some, like Tamii Harris, 47, of Park Manor, the inauguration of America's first black president was important enough to go it alone.

Tamii Harris, 47, of Park Manor, shows off the official inauguration t-shirt distributed by the tour group operator to her travelers on a "Road trip to the White House."

"From the beginning, I wanted to go, and everyone else was flaking out," Harris said.

"I'm going because I owe it to myself. I owe it to Obama. I owe it to my mother and grandmother and Rosa [Parks] and Corretta [Scott King] and all the other women whose shoulders I'm standing on," she said.

"I want to be able to tell my own children and grandchildren I was there."

Inauguration-bound, they came with their hopes. They came with their dreams.

And right behind them were the street vendors.

No, this wasn't Washington, D.C. Not yet. This was 87th & the Dan Ryan, where the Frazier family of Marquette Park gathered with 96 fellow travelers to hop two charter buses bound for D.C. on a three-day "Road Trip to the White House."

A vendor boards the "Road trip to the White House" charter bus to sell her wares.

They'd ridden a charter bus back to Chicago after going to Washington for President Obama's inauguration. Afterward, the 103 Chicago area participants in this particular "Road Trip to the White House" bubbled over trying to describe the experience -- and how they believe it will help shape their futures.

As they returned home -- with memories and souvenir buttons decorated with Obama's visage and emblazoned with the words "I was there" -- and settled back into life in Chicago, they talked of what they'd witnessed and spoke with a sense of ownership of their new president.

When the Frazier family embarks this morning on their "Road Trip to the White House," their inauguration experience will be in the hands of a young, South Side tour operator who targeted those whom she calls "Barack Obama's people."

Purely Destinations owner Ivory Coats, 25, initially knew only that she was going.

"The night he was elected, I said, 'I'm definitely going to the inauguration!' '' Coats said. "Then I said, 'Ivory, why just you? People are going to want to be a part of history.' "

"But I see him one time, and he's got 5,000 people with him, then the next time you looked, he had 50,000 people. It just kept mushrooming," she said. "That's when you think to yourself, 'This young man has got to have something on the ball.' "